Living the Christian Life

When I was a little boy, we learned that the way of salvation involved confession, repentance, baptism, and a final step, live-the-Christian-life. I don’t think this was intentional, but the way I heard it, it seemed like adults never had any trouble with this last step. It sounded like living out the Christian life was easy.

Last week, as we looked at the Methodist way of salvation, we specifically looked at the end goal of Christianity, which is holiness, Christ-likeness, or Christian perfection. The last two weeks I have made the comparison of living the Christian life with riding the GoBus from Athens to Cincinnati. We have the choice to get off the bus at any time. But how do we stay on the bus? How do we live the Christian life?

John Wesley was very methodical; this is where the term “Methodist” came from. He and his Holy Club figured out what helped keep them “on the Go Bus” and regularly, even religiously did it. From studying the Bible to fasting to caring for the hungry and sick, they did it weekly. And while these practices did not save them, they did help them stay on the bus. John Wesley declared that “evangelical faith should manifest itself in evangelical living.”

In other words, a faith in the good news of Jesus Christ must demonstrate itself in living out the good news. To that end, Wesley wrote the General Rules for his societies. Before I get to that, let me explain societies a little better.

Initially, the societies were made up of people within the Church of England. Methodism was simply a movement within an existing church. While church members generally attended church once a week, the societies met additionally. This would be like a Sunday evening preaching service. In 1784, John Wesley set up a plan to set up the American Methodist Church as a separate entity from the Church of England, and the societies became church.

If you were a part of one of the societies, the rules included that members were to meet once a week in what was called a class. This isn’t to be confused with a Sunday School class – Sunday School was created to teach the children, especially the poorest of the poor, because most children did not attend school. Instead, the class meeting would be a small group focused on confession and prayer. They would consist of neighborhood groups of up to twelve people who would be committed to accountability and discipleship. Each class would be led by a lay person.

Hebrews 10:25 says, Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching. When we don’t gather together, as commanded in the Bible, we tend to turn Christianity into an individualistic pursuit. One in which I can worship God without going to church, you know, the idea that I can more easily connect with God in the woods or the golf course than in a church building full of other people. To Wesleyans, Christianity is always a social religion. “To turn it into a solitary one is to destroy it.”

This verse is not just about coming to church on Sunday morning. In fact, we sometimes mistake this building or this Sunday morning gathering for “church” when, in fact, the church is the people of God behaving as the people of God. And for Wesley, it wasn’t just about the Sunday service. In fact, he believed that it was unethical to preach without providing a means for people to grow toward spiritual maturity.

He stated that “the preaching like an apostle, without joining together those that are awakened, and training them up in the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer. How much preaching has there been for these twenty years all over Pembrokeshire! But no regular societies, no discipline, no order or connection; and the consequence is, that nine in ten of the once-awakened are now faster asleep than ever.” (John Wesley’s Journal, Volume 3, 1760-1773).

In other words, there had been preaching for twenty years, but nobody had done anything about it. They hadn’t gathered together, they weren’t encouraging one another, they weren’t accountable to anyone, and because of this, 90% of the new converts were back into their slumber (which is how Wesley often described the pre-Christian).

So we find Methodists gathering together in class meetings. They were so important to early Methodists that you would get a ticket at your class meeting and if you couldn’t produce that ticket at worship, you wouldn’t get Communion! The class meeting just showed how high-accountability the early Methodists were. They were all expected to follow John Wesley’s General Rules (which we will talk about in a moment), but the class leaders were also expected to give an account for those under their charge.

They were expected to see each person at least once a week in order to see how their souls are, to advise, reprove, comfort, or exhort, to collect an offering for the preachers, the church, and the poor. They were also to meet the ministers and inform them of who was sick or who were not living out the general rules. They were also to turn in the money they had collected.

If someone wouldn’t observe the rules or habitually broke them, listen to what the consequence was: “We will admonish him of the error of his ways. We will bear with him for a season. But then, if he repent not, he hath no more place among us. We have delivered our own souls.”

What were the General Rules? Actually these general rules are still found in our Book of Discipline. They can be boiled down to three things: do no harm, do good, and continue to evidence the desire of salvation, in other words, do the things that help you stay in love with God.

To “do no harm,” Methodists were told to “avoid evil of every kind.” This goes with the passage from 3 John 1:11: Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.

Of course, methodically, John Wesley spelled out what these “evils of every kind” were that we are supposed to avoid. He included some givens, like fighting, drunkenness, and slaveholding, and some other popular ones, like taking the Lord’s name in vain and working on the Sabbath. He also included some that have to do with money, so you’re not supposed to buy or sell untaxed bootlegs or charge unlawful interest.

There are some general no-no’s, like: don’t do to others what we wouldn’t want them to do to us (kind of the negative side of the Golden Rule) and don’t do what isn’t for the glory of God.

This would include wearing gold or costly apparel; singing songs/reading books that do not tend to the love or knowledge of God; softness/needless self-indulgence; laying up treasure on earth; and borrowing without a probability of paying. And, of course, there are some random ones, like using many words in buying or selling or speaking evil of magistrates or ministers!

Though in the holiness tradition, we can tend to set up rules to help us avoid doing what we’re not supposed to do, for the General Rules to simply tell us what not to do would end up being pretty Pharisaic. So the General Rules also give a prescription for what Methodists are supposed to do.

We are called to do good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all. Physically, we’re called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. Wesley didn’t write anything revolutionary or new here; he simply echoed what Jesus said in Matthew 25, where Jesus told the parable of the sheep and the goats – “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” (Matthew 25:34-40)

Whatever you do for the least of these, you in fact are doing to Jesus. Even when it doesn’t look like Him. But our General Rules aren’t just about meeting people’s physical needs. We are also to do good to their souls, instructing and teaching everyone to obey all that Jesus commanded.

One interesting point to this is that many people have long given the excuse that “I’m not called to ‘this or that’” as an excuse to not evangelize or teach or tell how God has changed their lives. This is just a lame excuse. Our General Rules teach us to do good, regardless. Will this mean people might take advantage of us? Unfortunately, yes. This is why we’re called to run with patience the race set before us, denying ourselves, take up our cross daily, submitting to bear the reproach of Christ, even expecting people to falsely accuse us of all kinds of evil.

But even as we experience all of the difficulties that this life has for us, we are to continue to evidence the desire of salvation. As Bishop Rueben Job has paraphrased this aspect of the General Rules, “stay in love with God.” In other words, it is not enough to simply avoid evil and do good to others. That would be like expecting someone to go out and give rides to everyone wherever they want, but not allowing them to fill up their gas tanks.

John Wesley tells us to make sure our gas tanks are filled. How do we do this in real, practical ways? You won’t find anything new in this list. It includes publically worshiping God. So showing up for worship services with other people helps us stay in love with God. I don’t know how many times I have been encouraged by worshiping with other people. I don’t just say this to try to keep up attendance in this church; it is vital that we gather together with other Christians, not just for fellowship, but for worship!

We gather together for prayer as well; it is vitally important to not only worship together but to pray together. When I offer to pray for people, I don’t know how many times I’ve had them tell me that they don’t know the last time when someone was praying for them. To me that’s really sad. We need prayer. Every one of us needs prayer. So think about it; if you need prayer, so does the person next to you. What would happen if you stopped what you were doing and prayed for that person? Or when someone tells you of a struggle they are going through, what would happen if you stopped right away and prayed for them? Furthermore, I wonder how many families stop and pray together anymore? This is possibly the most powerful thing you can do.

Speaking of powerful things that many people don’t do, the General Rules advocate fasting; when Jesus talks to his disciples about fasting, he never says, “if you fast” – but always “when you fast.” Take a time to fast, go without, and use that time to pray, to ask God’s will, to focus on God. It is time and energy well-spent.

And in our gatherings, the Bible must be central. Not only should we make sure that the Scriptures are read during our worship services, but we should also spend our time searching the Scriptures on our own. There is no reason why we, with our high rate of literacy and the availability of Bibles, should not be spending our time in the Scriptures. Instead, we make the Psalm true: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. (Psalm 119:105). Or how about this one, from Psalm 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

When we don’t just read the Bible, but meditate on it, asking the Holy Spirit to speak to us through it, it is transformative. We not only learn new things, but it changes the way we think, the way we act, and the way we interpret the world around us. Add to that what happens when we get together with Christian brothers and sisters and discuss the Scriptures, and you have a recipe for a great way to move forward in a Christian life that is not always easy. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

You see, for Wesleyans, Scripture is always the cornerstone. The Bible contains everything that is necessary for our knowledge of God’s will, of Jesus Christ the only redeemer, of our salvation, and of our growth in grace. This is why United Methodist doctrine has always historically been under the authority of Scripture. No doctrine that cannot be found in Scripture can be required. Reading, hearing, and meditating on the scriptures is one of the ordinary channels by which God conveys prevenient, justifying and sanctifying grace to human beings.

In seminary circles we often talk about the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral, which is boiled down to this: Our faith is revealed in Scripture, but it is also illuminated by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. It is never meant to be four equal sides, however. Scripture is the center, our anchor and our guide. But our biblical interpretation is guided by the other three. When we talk about tradition, we’re not talking about “what we’ve always done” – think of tradition as “how God has historically interacted with His people.” We are guided in our lives by how God has acted in history and interacted with humanity. So we consider what the church has always believed, understanding that some change is necessary, especially changing methods, but we learn from what our ancestors taught.

Experience is what God is doing in the life of the believer. It is the personal appropriation of God’s forgiving and empowering grace. There are times when it is hard to understand exactly what has happened; sometimes our friends can help us interpret our experience. I love the story in John 9, where Jesus healed a man who had been blind since birth. The Jews were giving him a really hard time about the healing and were demanding that he tell them how it had happened. They especially were attacking Jesus’ character, accusing him of being a sinner. He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25) Our experience helps us understand what God has done and what God will continue to do. It includes the experience of the whole church community as well as our own.

Finally, we get to reason. Don’t check your brain at the door! If you do a search of all the verses where God invites you to “consider” – you find that God is reasoning with us! Furthermore, hearing the Word requires us to think. Reason is not just human wisdom, but it is always assisted by the Holy Spirit. There are times when the wisdom of the world is foolishness; for example, the wisdom of the world would scoff that a sacrifice on a cross two thousand years ago would be sufficient to save us from our sins, but we know that to be true, as the Holy Spirit offers assurance to our spirits of our salvation. John Wesley went so far as to say:

“We cannot reason ourselves to heaven, but to hell. Faith is consistent with reason, yet reason cannot produce faith, in the scriptural sense of the word. Faith is an evidence or conviction of things not seen. A divine evidence bringing full conviction of an invisible, eternal world.” (Works, Vol. VI, p. 355)

And so, by avoiding evil, doing good, and doing the things that help us stay in love with God, together we continue on our journey of holy living, a journey toward entire sanctification.